Early Days Of East Pakistan

[G.Subramaniam]

How the commies brainwashed the east bengal hindu refugees to prevent reprisals against west bengal muslims

The following is a commie viewpoint of the hindu refugee flow from east bengal

http://www.pstc.brown.edu/chatterjee.PDF

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and alienating Pakistan as a result, undermining India's foundational principle of secularism, and burdening the fragile economy. Nehru's letter to the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Bidhan Chandra Roy reflects this quandary: “It is wrong to encourage any large-scale migration from East Bengal to the West. Indeed, if such a migration takes place, West Bengal and to some extent the Indian Union
would be overwhelmed... If they come over to West Bengal, we must look after them. But it is no service to them to encourage them to join the vast mass of refugees who can at best be poorly cared for” (Chakraborty 1982: 106). A half century after Partition, reviews of the Central Government of India’s record on East Bengali refugee rehabilitation suggest that it was not only inadequate but
discriminatory in view of its policy toward West Punjabi refugees of Partition (Estimates Committee 1989, Govt.of West Bengal 1980).
The East Bengali migrants’ access to rehabilitation assistance in India rested on their recognition as “refugees”--and therefore eligibility for assistance by the state. A “refugee” or “displaced person” was defined as A “person who was ordinarily resident in the territories now comprising East Pakistan, but who on account of civil disturbances or the fear of civil disturbances or on account of the partition of India has migrated” (Ministry of Rehabilitation 1957: 86). But while acknowledging that “fear” of persecution or violence was a valid justification for migration, the official definition was imprecise about the preconditions of fear that the state would accept as meriting shelter in India. Increasingly the Indian government tuned its antenna to spectacular worse-case scenarios in Pakistan and tried to ignore complaints of “everyday” insecurity--quick to declare that it was “not aware that the East Bengali Hindus had problems” or it knew of no “incidents” in East Pakistan to justify a population displacement (Ananda Bazar Patrika, 21 February 1948). This euphemistically termed “incident” was an incontrovertible and immediate event of life-threatening violence--the quintessential case of which was taken to be a “communal riot”. In other words, the state sought to distinguish between “voluntary” and “forced” migrants.
A distinction was also sought to be made between “economic” and “political” refugees. In 1948, the provincial Government of West Bengal issued a press note stating that they would discontinue registering East Bengalis coming to the state as refugees because “whatever might have been the cause of the exodus in the past, similar conditions do not now prevail. There is hardly any communal disturbance in Eastern Pakistan... Therefore, the present exodus is due to economic causes”
(Ananda Bazar Patrika, 26 June 1948). This assumption was challenged by the president of the East Bengal Minority Welfare Committee in Calcutta: “The Press Note... lightheartedly refers to the ‘economic causes’ of the steadily continuing exodus. These ‘economic causes’ are a direct consequence of partition on a communal basis” (ibid). There can be little doubt that he considered the
government's hairsplitting, specious and his explicit linkage of refugee status to Partition victimhood will be shown to be a part of a resistant discourse of entitlement among displaced East Bengali Hindus.
The government's “mistrust” of the refugees (Daniel and Knudsen 1995) reflected that of the general West Bengali population's. Cartoons appeared in Calcutta newspapers revealing public apprehension regarding the costs of assisting a large population of East Bengali refugees. In one, West Bengal was depicted lying in a hospital bed with various ailments including “refugee-itis”. A worried visitor was shown asking the attendant doctor, Chief Minister B.C. Roy, if the case was “hopeless” (Amrita Bazar Patrika, 14 January 1950). West Bengalis associated the influx of thousands of East Bengali refugees with every malaise from overcrowding, squalor, social disintegration and soaring crime rates to unemployment and the rising cost of living. It was anticipated that the Hindu refugees would stoke communal violence against the Muslims of West Bengal or be manipulated by political 7 parties seeking constituencies. And the refugees' acts of trespass on private and state property as they attempted to resettle themselves, only confirmed popular misgivings. Communist workers trying to build up a following among the local poor and the refugee testify to the anger of the rural West Bengali landless over the distribution of precious agricultural land among the refugees, and occasions when refugees were prevented by locals from settling on land that the government had allocated for their resettlement (Interview with Bijoy Majumdar, 1988). There were several clashes between industrial worker striking for higher wages and improved working conditions, and refugees eager to work for
a pittance. Against this background, it becomes clear that the West Bengali joke that back “home” every East Bengali was a zamindar (landlord) reflected suspicion about the authenticity of the refugees claims to be victims. But there was considerable sympathy as well which acknowledged this public reluctance to engage with the humanitarian burden signalled by East Bengali claims of victimhood. Another cartoon by the same artist whose work I referred to earlier showed a swordwielding Liaquat Ali Khan, the Premier of Pakistan, standing over mutilated bodies while a Congressman pulled away in a boat while pleading with folded hands: “There is no space, this boat is small.” It was an unambiguous representation of the East Bengalis as victims--both of physical violence in Muslim Pakistan and of epistemological denial in India.
The refugee discourse of “Historic Rights” East Bengali migrants were quick to counter the power imbalance inherent in the state's attempt to determine eligibility and the reservations on the part of a section of the local population regarding the validity of their claim to refugee status. The politico-social category of the “refugee”
and its Bengali synonym sharanarthi (someone who seeks refuge from a greater power ) were initially the topic of intense debate. For many East Bengali Hindu migrants the image conveyed was a derogatory one, conflated with the act of begging, dependence on the charity and compassion of strangers and demeaning supplication. As one East Bengali commentator noted, “Those who roamed the streets of Dhaka soliciting support for the Partition didn't even dream that, as a reward for their gesture in agreeing to leave, they would be forever labelled ‘refugees’, a word that does more violence to the idea of a home than any other in any language”(The Sunday Statesman, 2 March 1986).
But increasingly, it was this word “refugee” with its powerful connotations of loss, that was appropriated by the displaced as they collectively sought to represent their interests on a political platform. A pamphlet issued to commemorate a refugee convention organized by the Refugee Central Rehabilitation Council--the refugee wing of the Revolutionary Socialist Party in West Bengal--makes
it clear that the migrants were determined to establish their entitlement to protection and assistance in India as an inalienable right--not subject to the host people or government's pity or whim: The East Bengalis expelled from Pakistan, can demand to build their homes on every inch of Indian soil on the strength of their adhikar (own right). They are not sharanarthi (supplicants) but kshatipuraner dabidar (claimants to compensation for losses) (RCRC n.d.: 1).
Consider the following exerpt from a pamphlet entitled “Aitihashik Adhikar” or “Historic Rights”, published by the East Bengal Minority Welfare Association which advocated refugee rights for post- 1971 migrants who were denied state assistance. The partition left us homeless, bereft of everything. We did not fight for independence in order to lead the lives of 8 beggars. Those of us who cannot remain in East Pakistan are not doing anything wrong by seeking shelter in India. Why should the police push us back? Why should we live in hovels next to rail-tracks? Why should we be the object of people's mercy? ... it is only right that those who struggled and sacrificed for independence be repaid (EBMWA n.d.: 8-9).
Rehabilitation with dignity was not to be seen as an act of charity but as the repayment of a national debt to the East Bengali Hindus represented in this passage as historic agents--freedom-fighters and victims of Partition which consigned them to minorityhood and therefore subordination in a Muslimmajority
state. Identification as a refugee was important since this entitled them to relief and rehabilitation aid from the state or a least recognition of their special history and needs. It came to be used interchangeably with “displaced person” and “migrant” which are part of the official vocabulary of humanitarian assistance in India; and also with the more evocative “udbastu” and “bastuhara” of Bengali public discourse. “Bastu” means foundation of a house, and is associated with originary, foundational, ancestral and sacred. The prefix “ut” means “out of” and thus the word “udbastu” signals loss of home and by extension homeland; as does “bastuhara.” Both these no longer simply index a lack of shelter but bear the weight of the trauma of Partition. What is significant is that the migrants appropriated the signifiers, investing it with a positive repertoire of meanings, turning a lack into a strength, a powerful moral claim to victimhood which would have to be assuaged. Especially with the transformation of the displaced into voters, those who turned to the Left for redress took to the streets with the slogan “Amra kara? Bastuhara!” (“Who are we? Refugees!”) a signal of their
presence and predicament. And in later years those who continued to define themselves as “refugees”
did so in a spirit of critique, as a commentary on the failure of the government to rehabilitate them.
In addressing the ideas embedded in the concept “historic rights”, I would like to talk briefly about the refugees’ representation of themselves as exemplary nationalists and move on to considering the question of Partition victimhood. I draw here on documented evidence such as public speeches, press notes, letters to newspapers3, pamphlets/circulars, depositions to “fact” finding commissions, as well as personal interviews and auto-biographical or literary sources. The text of a letter to the editor of the Bengali-language newspaper, Ananda Bazar Patrika in 1948 by self-proclaimed East Bengali refugee is revealing:
The dissection of India and division of Bengal has prevented the enjoyment of our hard-won independence. Hindus and Sikhs have left their homes in the Punjab, North West Frontier Provinces, Sind, and Baluchistan and the Indian government have helped to evacuate them and are trying to solve the complicated problem of resettling them. But it is our 3The readership of papers like the Ananda Bazar Patrika and the Amrita Bazar Patrika which were based in Calcutta, continued to span the two Bengals as late as 1950-1. They published news on and letters from East Bengalis, and were perceived as a window into the condition of the Hindus in post-partition East Pakistan--where they were first censored and then banned for inciting communal animosity. 9 misfortune that those who have undertaken the greatest atmatyag (self sacrifice) and given the most blood in the independence movement are neglected at home and abroad.
The West Bengal government is ashamed to think of East Bengali Hindus. The Government of India neither are nor feel the need to be informed about them. And this, even though the first to dream of freedom was the sage Bankimchandra and the first general in the battle for independence was Bengal's Surendranath. (5 January 1948)
In the 19th century, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee instructed Bengalis through his historical, nationalist novels into a consciousness of themselves as a proud and virile jati or race, capable of future greatness. Surendranath Banerjee, also mentioned in the letter, was a founder of the Indian Association which later merged into the Indian National Congress--the political organization which dominated the nationalist movement for an independent India. By invoking these two names, the writer was tapping into a self-image that is widely prevalent among all Bengalis--that as torchbearers to the rest of India, they had initiated the nationalist movement against the British, radicalized it, and lost the most in its
cause. Bengali intellectuals and activists had been prominent in the nationalist movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but in the 1930s, Bengal's leadership was eclipsed by the Gandhian faction in the Congress. With the attrition of Bengal's power, developments like Partition came to be cast by the people of the region as an anti-Bengali plot or rationalized as a sacrifice willingly borne by the East Bengalis for the greater good of India4. The argument continued that they had struggled for a life of emancipation in India, not of subordination in a Muslim nation not of their own choosing, and therefore had a right to live in a Hindu homeland.
The patriot proved to be an evocative signifier in terms of which East Bengali Hindus made claims about the distinctiveness and exemplariness of their nationalism, contradicting the disparaging allegations of non-migrants and Indian officialdom, that migration was an act of passive cowardice
and burdensome disservice to the inhabitants of both India and Pakistan. The self-referential use of the allied image of the shahid or martyr was also a authenticating gesture that drew on the traditional
Indic concept of “generative sacrifice” (Das and Nandy 1985: 178) as and projected East Bengali Hindus as historical agents to whom the nation owed a collective debt--asylum and resettlement.
Finally, this discourse of patriotism and sacrifice included each East Bengali Hindu in its address, serving to unify and mobilize the refugees into a community of solidarity and expectation by smoothing over the unevennesses of caste, class and interest so that every refugee became the historical heir of the swadhinata sangrami or “freedom fighter.” The ultimate act as true nationalists was to go to India- -the destiny of Hindu East Bengali refugees who must abandon their ancestral homes for a Hindu 4Having played a key role in the anti-colonial movement in Bengal, the Hindu elite had hoped to replace the British in the postcolonial order and rejected the idea that a united Bengal would be included in Pakistan, unwilling to be subjected to the rule of a Muslim majority in the province. Thus the partition of Bengal was actively proposed by West Bengali politicians--of both the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha. And while Bakarganj was the only East Bengal district to endorse the partition campaign, many East Bengalis considered the redrawing of boundaries preferable to losing undivided Bengal to Pakistan.
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homeland of the spirit. A doggerel that a refugee interviewee remembered being taunted with by Muslims in the days leading up to Partition, drew on this structure of feeling: (Interview with Mahendra Mondal from Barisal, 1989)
On the excuse of Noakhali,5 They made Bihar into Karbala6. Bihar has become Hindustan. Bengal has become Pakistan. Go away--each to his own address. The refugees as Partition victims As we have seen earlier, in the government’s scheme of things “partition” was presented as the reason for the refugee influx of 1947 alone, “communal riots” were recorded as the official reason for the migration of 1950--each episode in the massive and protracted flight from East Pakistan was related to a different cause. The reason for this was to attempt to establish a sliding scale of true or deserving displacement to ease the state’s humanitarian responsibility. But in the refugees’ own accounts of their displacement it was “desh bhag,” literally the “division of the homeland” or Partition which is the dominant reference. There is of course the detail of year and “immediate” cause,
but as a schoolmaster interviewee pointed out, the “underlying cause” for the insecurity of Bengali Hindus in East Pakistan and their ultimate exodus was Partition (Interview with Nirmal Chandra Sarkar, 1989). I found when I asked my interviewees the question, “Why did you leave your desh (homeland)?”, the answer was often on the lines of “After desh bhag we could no longer remain
there”, and sometimes an outraged “Don’t you know!” I was seen to be casting doubt on what the refugees assumed to have been established beyond question--that the East Bengalis were victims of the partition of India on the fundamental basis of religion, which uprooted them psychologically and then physically. Was I trying to imply that they had left their ancestral homes “for fun?” Partition
functioned as a structuring device, describing one original trauma and a shared experience of misfortune. It provided a central and awful image that had the power to explain the migrants’ collective predicament. The description of their victimhood in terms of Partition-induced homelessness, minorityhood and Muslim communalism reflected their opposition to the Indian leadership's scepticism about their allegations of post-Partition insecurity in East Pakistan and reluctance to accord them refugee status. Saadat Hasan Manto wrote on a note of mordant prophecy after the bloody partition of Punjab in 1947, “...India was free. Pakistan was free from the moment of its birth. But man was a slave in both
countries, of prejudice, of religious fanaticism, of bestiality, of cruelty” (1987: 6).This equation of the moment of independence with the unfreedom of fear and prejudice, of nationalism with exile affords us an insight into the condition of insecurity and degradation experienced by the religious minorities in India and Pakistan. Nationalisms with their declared affiliation to a place, a people and
a past arrogate truth exclusively to themselves and assign falsehood and inferiority to others. The presence of 40 million Muslims in India, and over 12 million Hindus in Pakistan--as visible religious 5This is a reference to the Noakhali riots of 1946 in East Bengal. 6The Imam Husein was martyred at Karbala--a powerful symbol of the triumph of evil over good for Shia Muslims--and a shorthand for the slaughter of innocents.